Ruby: Inserting Table Data into your messages

So I wanted to improve the UI of a feature that I was building by having the alert include the actual name of what I modifying and at what time. There is a specific syntax used to insert it and it looks like this within the control structure.

if var.updated_at

show.now[:alert] = "Your client, #{var.name} came at #{var.modified_time}."

end

Ruby: if elsif elsif else statements... ya... they do exist.

I'm not crazy... just a n00b.

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# if, elsif and else illustrated

print "What distance in miles? "

miles = STDIN.gets.to_f

if miles < 2
puts "walk"
elsif miles < 6
puts "cycle"
elsif miles < 30
puts "bus or drive"
elsif miles < 350
puts "train"
else
puts "don't bother"
end

print "#{miles} miles is #{miles/5*8} kilometres\n"

Link for more info.

Ruby: String Manipulators

So I'm working on a feature that requires the input of a text field to be formatted in uppercase and have all spaces and dashes removed from the string.

So in the RAILS console, try:

>> a="Abs-a23-pdk 23 aB1"
=>"Abs-a23-pdk 23 aB1"
>> a.gsub!(" ", "")
=>"Abs-a23-pdk23aB1"
>> a.gsub!("-", "")
=> "Absa23pdk23aB1"
>> a.upcase!
=> "ABSA23PDK23AB1"
>> a
=> "ABSA23PDK23AB1"

Notes:
You need the "!" after the command to modify (make changes permanent) the receiver.

If you want to be fancy and write one line to do the 3 methods, try:
>> a="Abs-a23-pdk 23 aB1"
=> "Abs-a23-pdk 23 aB1"
>> a.gsub!(/[ -]/, "").upcase!
=> "ABSA23PDK23AB1"
>> a
=> "ABSA23PDK23AB1"

Notes:
So pretty much everything in between the brackets is removed is removed
[%$ _-] in this case, %, $, _, - and spaces are removed.
[1-9] in this case, all numbers are removed.

Here a link to the official documentation:
http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/String.html

Another Link:
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Ruby_String_Replacement,_Substitution_and_Insertion